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It appears the sand has finally slipped through the hourglass and no longer will free-to-air audiences hear the words "these are the days of our lives".

Like sands through the hourglass, so is Channel Nine's commitment to a decades-old audience.

Back in 2007 an older, flabbier Nine made the line call to ditch the long-running soap The Young and The Restless for a new talk show, The Catch-Up. We all know how that ended.

Now, in a decision that will bruise soap fans badly, the leaner, meaner Nine is to ditch Days of our Lives, the US daily soap opera which has been cemented into its daytime schedule for 45 years.

Days of our Lives first aired on Nine in 1968.

Australia then was a very different place: Elizabeth II was on the throne, there was a leadership battle within the Australian Labor Party and there was a referendum to decide if Australia needed its first casino.

Looking back from the safety of 2013, it's like an alien landscape.

Into this unfamiliar world came Days of our Lives, a dose of small-town America, pitched at small-town Australia and parked in a time-slot that would form cobwebs, and eventually rust, on the then-titanic Channel Nine.

Originally it was just a half-hour. It starred dashing Dr Tom Horton (Macdonald Carey), his son Mickey (John Clarke), troubled daughter Marie (Maree Cheatham), who became the show's obligatory nun, and Tom's wife, the omnipresent, always understanding Alice Horton (Frances Reid).

DOOL, as it became known, evolved over time. From the homely 1970s, with plot-lines about infidelity and illegitimate children (and nuns), to the international intrigue of the 1970s, in which characters like super-villain Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) rose to giddy cultural heights.

In the 1980s, along with the rest of television, DOOL applied its mascara heavily, and plumped up the shoulder pads, pushing a pantheon of glamorous women to the front line, notably Anna DiMera (Leann Hunley), Hope Brady (Kristian Alfonso) and the luminous, immortal Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall).

Days of our Lives also defined the soap opera super-couple: "Bo and Hope", "Patch and Kayla", "Roman and Marlena" chief among them long before the media discovered Bennifer, TomKat and Brangelina.

There is no doubt that, along with the prime-time super-soaps of the day, such as Dynasty, Dallas, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest, the 1980s was the cultural zenith of the daytime soap opera. Not just because, for most shows, that was the last time they spruced up the sets.

Since then, in different ways, the genre has been in slow decline.

DOOL, nonetheless, has gone down with a fight. Notable storylines in the last two decades include the show's first gay romance, between Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith) and Will Horton (Chandler Massey) and another in which the town's good doctor, Marlena Brady (nee Evans) was possessed by the devil.

For some fans, the torch of DOOL was extinguished in 2010 when Alice Horton, and the actress who played her, Frances Reid, passed away.

In the US, the daytime soap genre has been seriously depleted, thanks to commercial pressures and, with respect, a deplorable lack of creative renewal.

Shows like As The World Turns and Guiding Light have been axed and followed earlier long-running classics such as Search for Tomorrow and Another World into the bin. Two others, One Life to Live and All My Children, were axed but web-based continuations were in development.

Days of our Lives is aired in the US by NBC, but owned by the studio Sony Pictures. Sony's television arm sells the series worldwide. Any deal to save it for Australian viewers would be negotiated with them.

NBC has commissioned the show through to September 2014.

A spokesman for Nine said the network had not renewed its deal for DOOL "for commercial reasons". Translation: budget cuts. The GFC may have passed the rest of Australia by, but it has hit our commercial networks hard.

Sony has advised Nine it is working to find a "new partner" for the show but it has not confirmed a new deal. Long-term fans will be hoping for a reprieve like the one The Young and The Restless got. It was snapped up by the pay TV platform Foxtel.

Nine's final episode of Days of our Lives will air on Friday, April 26.

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

i think they're basing it more on the fact that Days had been getting ratings that were much lower for a while now & so the network decided not to renew because the trend is showing that it's losing viewers.i feel bad for the Aussies since they were just getting to the reset, and all the goodness we all loved so much when MarDar first took over (not including the eggbaby resolution nonsense).

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

didn't they do a short "here's a summary of all the stuff that happened during the stuff we're skipping over & here's what's going on now" video to try to ease the transition?

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

OK well I'm Australian and have been watching for the past eight years so if they decided to skip a few episodes to catch up with the US it definitely happened pre EJ arriving and I would say pre 8 years ago. Unless for some reason it was delayed in some regional channels / or western states.

The storyline here has just got past Johnny going missing after Johns shooting so approx 18 months behind ie now currently December 2011 storylines.

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

OK well I'm Australian and have been watching for the past eight years so if they decided to skip a few episodes to catch up with the US it definitely happened pre EJ arriving and I would say pre 8 years ago. Unless for some reason it was delayed in some regional channels / or western states.

The storyline here has just got past Johnny going missing after Johns shooting so approx 18 months behind ie now currently December 2011 storylines.

you probably started watching soon after they did the jump. I believe the jump skipped over part of Princess Gina & quite a bit of the Hope/John/Bo/Lexie stuff with JT & Isaac.

This almost makes me think about how many international/non-US viewers the soap has. I'm not even sure I know where all DAYS (or any of the other soaps, for that matter) still air. I know Canada gets everything, but I can't remember if the UK still does or not. And since I started watching all of the UK soaps thanks to the internet (since none of the air here except for Coronation Street now on Hulu/Hulu+ 2-3 weeks behind UK time), I wonder if anyone else watches US soaps strictly through the internet or even discovered the US soaps via the internet because they don't air in their country. Or watch the soaps at US speed via online even though the shows air in their country, but at a delayed pace.

Wow, that sucks for the Australians. I find it interesting that Days won their timeslot there, but they're still canceling it. What kind of network does that?

I think a major problem was that a few years ago they decided to skip a few years of episodes to try to catch up with U.S. and lost a lot of viewers in the process. One day you were watching your favourite couples and the next day a whole new set of characters were on. A lot of long time fans just tuned out. I know my sister was pretty upset!

OK well I'm Australian and have been watching for the past eight years so if they decided to skip a few episodes to catch up with the US it definitely happened pre EJ arriving and I would say pre 8 years ago. Unless for some reason it was delayed in some regional channels / or western states.

The storyline here has just got past Johnny going missing after Johns shooting so approx 18 months behind ie now currently December 2011 storylines.

you probably started watching soon after they did the jump. I believe the jump skipped over part of Princess Gina & quite a bit of the Hope/John/Bo/Lexie stuff with JT & Isaac.

This almost makes me think about how many international/non-US viewers the soap has. I'm not even sure I know where all DAYS (or any of the other soaps, for that matter) still air. I know Canada gets everything, but I can't remember if the UK still does or not. And since I started watching all of the UK soaps thanks to the internet (since none of the air here except for Coronation Street now on Hulu/Hulu+ 2-3 weeks behind UK time), I wonder if anyone else watches US soaps strictly through the internet or even discovered the US soaps via the internet because they don't air in their country. Or watch the soaps at US speed via online even though the shows air in their country, but at a delayed pace.

Just doing a quick search.Days airs in:South Africa (where it remains very popular 1.5 million viewers a week) Barbados BahamasBelizeCanada (on both French and English television)DenmarkGermanyJamaicaNew Zealand (Just started again last month after being cancelled in 2010)NorwaySweden United Arab Emirates

Maybe more.

South Africa is airing episodes from 2010. French Canada is about to enter 2003. New Zealand is currently 6 months behind.

It hasn't aired in the UK since 2010. But your right with the internet people could probably watch Days on the moon.